Last Words

    We sat at my mother’s bedside for the last three days she lived, and we cradled her in our arms as she took her last breath. Seven of us – children and grandchildren – sang her the lullabies she once sang to us.
    For her, the path of peace in old age was the path of forgetfulness, gentle confusions and then disappearances; but feeling, in the present, and vision and music never left her. Responsiveness never left her. She blew kisses to show appreciation and love. She conducted music, her arms and hands flowing wavelike through air to accompany or encourage a tune – yours, mine, anyone’s.
    The surest communication route was song lyrics; we’d sing and pause and let her complete the last word. Toward the end, we didn’t know if she could still understand or speak. She hadn’t said a word for days.
    “Boys and girls together,”/ we tried. “Me and Mamie O’Rourke/ Tripped the light fantastic on/ The sidewalks of New…”
    And there it was, gurgling up from deep in her throat, almost inaudible, this gentle, artistic, New York City girl’s very last word:
    “York.”